May 30, 2019 – Gray Skies, Blue Lines, and Silver Foxes – A SEPA Tributary

Not a day for backcasts, but bow and arrow.

Tom H. and I poked around one of his favorite SEPA blue lines today.  We did something similar in late December of 2018 at a different spot, but today was much more successful.  The so-called unsettled weather continued today, but besides a couple brief showers, we did not run into the heavy rain until we were nearly back to my house.  There were signs in the verdant State Game Lands that heavy storms had passed through in the night or early morning, but the little trickle we fished was in good shape—a bit more stained than normal, so many fish ate the nymph, but not so stained that an equal number of fish didn’t look up for the dry.  Besides three fish that I caught near the end of our trip on a bugger, tied on mainly because a little brookie finally mangled my rig beyond repair, we stuck to the dry-dropper and had steady success.  We fished from about 9:40 AM to 2:40 PM, give or take a few minutes on either end, and we just sort of slowly picked the water apart, taking turns at prime spots.  Because we fished together, we were present for most of each other’s highlights, and even did some netting for one another.

A little blueline adventure begins

Tom may have lost the largest brookie of the morning, but he also managed to land the largest too.  In both cases, I was ready with the net, but only one fish made it in for a measure.  It was over 10 inches, so a good native fish not all that far from civilization.  We also caught brook trout as small as 4 inches on the dry fly.  Tom has not caught many brown trout here, but today we landed at least five of them, and three were good small stream fish and pretty to boot.  Tom had a lot of fish take his Royal Wulff, and I had a few take a parachute olive that I already had rigged on my 8 foot 3 weight rod.  Because of the heavier flow, I re-rigged a couple times, landing on the most effective nymph, a tungsten walt’s worm jig with a hot spot, but the larger fly I was using to float it ended up being mostly an indicator—I say mostly, however, because a few brookies did manage to choke down the size 12 hi-vis stimulator too.

Perhaps the best of each today.

It was humid, so we expected mosquitoes, but I only had one bug bite, and I think it was from a horse fly, anyway. There were caddis, though not heavy, and we even spotted a couple sizes of sulfurs here and there.  I saw no risers that we didn’t coax to rise, but with clearer water conditions, there were enough bugs around to make risers a possibility.  There was a particular stretch of water, about 500 yards, that was the most fishy looking and productive—it just had more holding water, not straight riffles.  Plunge pools were a bit disappointing, but then again a dry-dropper is not the perfect tool for a plunge pool when whitewater is heavier than normal.  When I tossed a small bugger for the last 20 minutes, I did pull three out of plunge pools, so next time Tom and I might have to fish different methods to maximize returns.

Some decent dry fly fish.

That said, we landed at least 30 fish between us and dropped a mess more that were too tiny or too smart to see the inside of a net.  There are all kinds of year classes of brookies, and Tom even landed a 4 inch brownie too, so they also seem to have had good spawns last year and the previous one too.  When things started getting skinnier and less fishy looking, we decided to turn back and hunt for the road.  It is always surprising how quickly the car comes into view when you are just walking on gravel or asphalt and not ducking limbs and climbing over deadfalls in the streambed. 

That walts did it for me, but Tom had many take a hi-vis Wulff dry

We made the call to wear waders because it was cooler and wetter when we arrived, but peeling off the breathables at the car was a swampy affair, so we may have gotten away with wet wading today.  After a visit to the truck stop for some caffeine and snacks, we made good time home, until we ran into the heavy rain for the last several miles.  I will check gages tonight to see if the flows warrant another short trip closer to home tomorrow, but I guess I should do some work too, so who knows.  Tom had the week off, so he may have done this trip alone this week anyway, but I am sure he liked having the company.  I too enjoyed the company and the opportunity to explore a new creek.  It was a fun little adventure and a good fishing day despite the crazy weather.

Really pretty fish from really pretty creek.